Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

I am gradually becoming a soccer fan. Someone should alert the Vatican, because this is a genuine miracle.

It started during the 2006 World Cup. The Tall One, a lifelong statistical anomaly of a soccer fan, insisted that we watch as much of “the beautiful game” as possible during this, the most important sporting event in the world. I had never watched professional soccer before and I assumed that like every other sport I have ever tried to watch, I would muster momentary interest in it, at best. Yet I actually enjoyed watching the games, much to my own surprise. Where I found baseball boring and constrained, soccer is dynamic and unpredictable. Where football reduces its players to hulking battering rams grunting from behind their helmets, soccer players and teams are full of personality and physical flair.

When Major League Soccer segued into its regular season here in the U. S., the Tall One decided he would make his best attempt to follow as much of the league as possible, and I decided—mostly because the Tall One is so good at elucidating the more ridiculous details of both U. S. and international soccer—to give it a shot as well.

Watching soccer in the United States, particularly if you want to follow the MLS, is like a case study in compromise. Only a handful of teams in the MLS have begun to turn a modest profit and the American level of play is clumsy and unpolished compared to Europe or even South America. Turnout for games remains low. The MLS, we are assured, is working on it. For instance, they recently signed David Beckham by bending over backwards and promising him ungodly sums of money, and though what this means for the U. S. game is uncertain, Beckham’s unrivaled fame and popularity are sure to give the MLS much needed attention.

Beckham was signed to the L. A. Galaxy, one of the MLS clubs named in the American style. Other teams have tried to raise their profiles by nonsensically copying the names of famous European clubs. DC United, though an obvious attempt to invoke Britain’s famous Manchester United, isn’t too bad. D.C., like Manchester, has a river running through it, and if nothing else, we’ve got that “united we stand” Lincolnian thing to fall back on. On the other hand, FC Dallas makes little sense, since over here we would call the team a Soccer Club, not a Football Club. The worst of these faux European pretenders is Real Salt Lake. That’s Ray-al, as in Real Madrid. First there’s the utter craziness of taking the name of the best team in the world and pinning it to the worst team in an already poorly regarded professional league. Second, I challenge you to find me anything royal in Salt Lake City, and no, the King of Kings does not count. The whole thing is a joke, but I suppose I should expect as much from a state that names its basketball team the Utah Jazz. Because in word association tests, when I say Utah, the first thing you think of is jazz.

At least the MLS, as a league, remains solvent through smart business decisions. The increasing strength of the league can be seen in the fact that every league game is now televised. The trick is figuring out where the games are being broadcast, since the major networks have yet to show an interest. Currently, we must rely on a matrix of TV stations for our soccer fix, and yes, LiveSoccerTV.com, like SoccerTV.com, is a website dedicated solely to telling you where you can catch games. Often, these two sites contradict each other. As I said, being a soccer fan in the U. S. is about compromise.

The current big event is the Copa America, a South American tournament held once every two years. This means that the Tall One and I have been sitting down for a lot of Univision and Telefutura. You don’t really need to understand Spanish to follow the game, but I’ve found a lot of my long forgotten college vocabulary coming back. It’s helped me appreciate just a little bit more of Univision’s uniquely high energy commentators. You don’t really need a grasp of el idioma to understand, “Penal! Penal! Penal! Penal! Penal! Penal! PENAAAAALTY!!” but it did help me pick up the phrase, “Don’t let your wife change the channel! We’re back!” after a fifteen minute technical interruption on the field.

The life and death, heart attack inducing antics of the Univision announcers stand in stark contrast to the play-by-play that Dave O’ Brien offered up during the 2006 World Cup. ABC/ESPN crowded the screen with graphics and had O’ Brien making strained baseball analogies to “explain” the game to the audience (hockey would have been easier, by the way). The final straw came during ABC’s pregame coverage of the Finals. The final match was held in the Olympiastadion, a massive venue in Berlin that was originally constructed for Hitler’s 1936 Olympic spectacle. Dave O’ Brien prattled on about how in the seventy years since we had overcome “der Fürer” and blah blah blah. I couldn’t handle it. We switched over to Univision.

This is a network on which it is perfectly acceptable not only to scream the famous, “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!” but also to follow it up with “GOL, GOL, GOL, GOL, GOL, GOL, GOL, GOL…” like the chiming of a Mexican church bell. In last night’s Uruguay vs. Brazil game, the announcer could not help himself. One of the Brazilian players is a man with the two part last name of Wagner Love. Or as the announcer kept pronouncing it, “Wagner Looove.”

I think that even if the Tall One and I end up subscribing to a better cable package that allows access to ESPN and Fox Soccer Channel, we’ll still come back to Univision for the theatrics. I just can’t be happy with the coverage unless the commentator sounds like he’s having a perpetual stroke.